Good autogen classes for NZ

[Timmo]

Hey everyone
Im just annotating some areas using the annotation tool in FSX.

A couple of questions and a couple of ponderings

1) How do you change the default texture of the the autogen buildings- the default is set to variations of a colonial english cottage, when ive tried to select a new one from the 'Textures' folder in the FSX install, it doesnt allow me to save the annotations.....where do i select new textures from/which textures can be used?

2) Has anyone experimented to find the best default autogen class which approximates NZ native bush? Ive found that the 'Regionalisation of broadleaf crops' seems to look OK- does anyone have any others?



Ponderings: How hard is it to make up a) a NZ native bush vegetation autogen class? and b) a building and roof texture set to apply to NZ autogen buildings.....the ones currently dont look particulary convincing (at least as far as i can tell)

Should this be something that the NZ flight sim community looks into?

[HardCorePawn]

the SE region of VOZ seems to approximate NZ conditions quite well

[Timmo]

I didnt think VOZ had released a FSX version yet?

[JonARNZ]

This might be something to look at indeed Tim. Might still be early days in terms of how its done, but I would imagine its along similar lines as 2004, whatever they are given I'm not master of scenery.

[Bingobob]

the SE region of VOZ seems to approximate NZ conditions quite well

Not sure what part of New Zealand you live in but a abundance of VOZ South East Eucalyptus is not what I call New Zealand

Timmo,I read a article by the creator of VOZ explaining that in Flightsim there are differant region codes a,b,c,d,e etcetc covering the globe. The Area region code for Oceania/ South Pacific was never activated by MS and this is why our region has had to be improved so much. Not sure of FSX but from my understanding it still does apply?
As I also understand that he is also working on a seperate New Zealand package to replicate our country. However I do not know or expect that to actually happen when a author is obviously going to be more focused to the local area they live in.
You crack that region coding and my view is you will be the most popular person in this part of the world

[ardypilot]

VOZ South East Eucalyptus is not what I call New Zealand

There are actually Eucalyptus trees growing all around Auckland International.

[Bingobob]

VOZ South East Eucalyptus is not what I call New Zealand

There are actually Eucalyptus trees growing all around Auckland International.

Could you possibly read what I wrote?

Then again if you dont get out of Auckland you would not notice that the native New Zealand foliage

[Timmo]

Interesting- TopRob, can you put any input on this?....

The houses is the major one for the moment...all my houses look English and i cant seem to change them

[ardypilot]

Then again if you dont get out of Auckland you would not notice that the native New Zealand foliage

I've been all over NZ mate, and there are Eucalyptus trees growing in places other than Auckland ya know. Read this

The native NZ fauna really is pretty though, I'd love to see a decent 'bush' autogen set for flight sim.

Also, the VOZ South East winter textures work pretty well in the Southern South Island I think.

As for building textures, the VOZ 'koorbygen' buildings are way better for NZ than the noddy-town default lookalikes. This post here describes how to keep them pernemently installed, even without VOZing in.

[Timmo]

Cheers for that Andrew -Ill give it a go
Have you used the FSX SDK at all? There is an option to select the autogen building texture you want to use on the buildings....but when you do, it says 'Cant save'....

?

[ZK-LGD]

... I read a article by the creator of VOZ explaining that in Flightsim there are differant region codes a,b,c,d,e etcetc covering the globe.  The Area region code for Oceania/ South Pacific was never activated by MS and this is why our region has had to be improved so much.  Not sure of FSX but from my understanding it still does apply?

...

You crack that region coding and my view is you will be the most popular person in this part of the world 

Sorry, but this was "broken" by Gerrish Grey waaaaaay back in FS2K2. This, from his Replacement Autogen Readme:

"There are 10 pairs of BMP files, or 'texture sheets', in the main FS2002\TEXTURE used by Autogen to display the default buildings in the FS2002 Autogen scenery. Of the ten pairs, it seems that seven are actually used at present (I recently discovered that two sets are used in the USA), whilst the remaining three are presumably a resource for future expansion of the system (in FS2004?). The filenames are

blda2.bmp/blda2lm.bmp - used in Europe
bldb2.bmp/bldb2lm.bmp - used in North America, the northern part of
Central America, and Hawaii
bldc2.bmp/bldc2lm.bmp - used in the dryer areas of SW USA
bldd2.bmp/bldd2lm.bmp - used in Latin America (South America, part of
Central America, and the Caribbean)
blde2.bmp/blde2lm.bmp - used in Africa and the Middle East (west of
the Persian Gulf)
bldf2.bmp/bldf2lm.bmp - used in Asia and much of the Pacific
bldg2.bmp/bldg2lm.bmp - used in Australiasia
bldh2.bmp/bldh2lm.bmp - not presently used ?
bldi2.bmp/bldi2lm.bmp - not presently used ?
bldj2.bmp/bldj2lm.bmp - not presently used ?"

Using this information, it was logical to assume that the texture .bmps bldg2 and bldg3 (and associated LightMaps) might (and did) refer to New Zealand in 2K4.

[ZK-LGD]

Ponderings: How hard is it to make up a) a NZ native bush vegetation autogen class?

(For FS9) First, change the 5 trees .bmps. This has already been done by NZCoaster and a (summer only) beta version of his NZ trees can be found here.

[Bingobob]

Thank you Dorian very informative.

Trolly, No need to tell me what grows in New Zealand I lived here most of my life, the abundance of gum tress is not as widespread as you would have us lead to believe. As you know certain areas of NZ are immense Pine Plantations the biggest boarders the Whirinaki Forest, in the Whirinaki forest there are no gum trees. The Euclyptus is mainly found in areas it was introduced to much as the English Oak, Elm and Horse Chesnut can be found in large portions of the south island. New Zealand has a vast array of differing foliage from the coast to the mountains and the North to the south, how much of it has been introduced is open to arguement. In the 4 years you have lived in New Zealand can you truly tell me you have taken much notice to all the foliage across the country?
Many of us New Zealanders have never seen the entire country.

As I said You crack that region coding and my view is you will be the most popular person in this part of the world. meaning getting a perfect land coverage. Photoreal goes somewhere towards it but is not the total solution and has been pointed out costs money to get that information.

FSX I believe could be the first step towards that level of realism but only if there is enough motivation and support to have it done, which I doubt our small population can generate that many interested simmers.

[Timmo]

Cheers for that- Ill have a look.
I need to look into this more.....Doing it that way seems like a reasonably easy way to do it....perhaps a more 'elegant' way would be to write a new XML class??
I think this would mean, from a distribution point of view, that users would need to overwrite their default autogendescriptions file which may not be the best though....

All data im referring to is for FSX only

[Timmo]

now now guys, keep it nice- No need for mud slinging here....

Regardless of what gum trees are where.....

1) The default classes provided in the FSX SDK can only approximate urban areas where introduced trees are prevalent....the range of default tree models does an OK job and at most would need a new XML region grouping titled 'NZ urban mix' (or something) which groups these various default tree models together

2) The default models do not contain many trees that look like Native NZ bush....this is the major shortcoming and would need a) new models for Ferns, pohutukawa, Toitoi, Kauri, Totara, Manuka etc etc and b) new classes to group these (i.e. NZscrub, NZbush, NZcoastalbush, NZcoastalscrub etc)

[Christian]

Hi Timmo

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but the autogen region for NZ in FSX is Z. So you need to duplicate the autogen sheets, and rename them from B to Z (unless the Z ones already exist, I'm not an autogenner).

Cheers,
Christian

[Timmo]

Hmmm the problem isnt finding the correct texture, its just that i cant set it. Whenever I do, the AutoGen editor saves 'Error- Cant save'

The Z-region texture would be fine for what i need and it is used on default houses/Standard autogen areas

See the bottom of this (BLD_Z2) texture sheet- those relate to the default house textures


But compare them to the houses ive added....they are like colonial english cottages (even though they are left as 'default' in the autogen editor.

[Christian]

Hmm, I don't think I know enough to help you in that case. Maybe there's a bug in the annotation editor? Worthwhile waiting for the SDK SP (shouldn't be much longer)?

Christian

[toprob]

Hmm, you are right, selecting anything other than the default texture set gives an error on save every time. I've asked around and I'll get back if a solution comes to hand.

[toprob]

Apparently the save error is a known bug. It doesn't appear on the list of SP1 fixes on the FSInsider site, but you never know, it may be fixed in SP1. We can only hope.